The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!

Powell frames the turn of the year as a moral and practical threshold: the past is irretrievable (“the dead past”), and energy is better spent on present obligations and future opportunities. The allusion to “Let the dead past bury its own dead” echoes biblical language (cf. Matthew 8:22) and the broader Victorian/Progressive-era habit of treating time as a field for self-improvement. By personifying the New Year as taking “possession of the clock of time,” the quote dramatizes renewal as an active takeover rather than a passive calendar change, urging readers to greet the coming months with resolve, duty, and hope.